


How Soon Is Now?

by charmenna



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Slow Burn, Time Skips, Will add as I think of more, literally all the angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29965809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmenna/pseuds/charmenna
Summary: You leave the team shortly after Spencer admits his love for you, only to return several years later. Not having had much contact with the team or Spencer, what will your presence set in motion and how will you cope with seeing how much Spencer has changed?(This fic contains a time jump from season 1-2 to season 12-13)
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s), Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Kudos: 15





	How Soon Is Now?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey-o! Now, I haven't written a fic since like 2017, so I feel like I am just getting back into it. I really hope you will enjoy this, and I want to set the scene a bit before we jump ahead in time. I will be taking some liberties with the time line, team members as well as post-prison Spencer. I realize this has probably been done before, but my muse just struck and I couldn't help myself.
> 
> Tell me what you think! Any constructive feedback/criticism is of course welcome. English is not my first language, so I am always a bit nervous about posting.
> 
> *****
> 
> For chapter 1, we are starting off right after ”Secrets and lies” season 1, episode 21.
> 
> I am purposely trying to keep Y/N's appearance as vague as possible, but I am adding in specific personality traits to fit the story. I hope that's okay!

The case had been grueling. Gideon had been forced to arrest his old friend, but on the bright side, a mother and her children had been rescued. That should have been enough to put Y/N in a better mood, but recent events had prohibited any type of relief she might have otherwise felt. Spencer was being weird again. Or, weirder, would perhaps be a better word for his current behavior.

Y/N knew her friend and colleague often had too many thoughts occupying his beautiful mind, but lately she had no idea what was going on with him. They had been friends ever since Spencer joined the bureau and the BAU, and she had always credited that to their closeness in age. In fact, she knew that must be why because they had little else in common. She had been there for him, along with Gideon, whenever Spencer had been having a rough go at things. She knew that he had tried to ask JJ out, only to be left disappointed when she brought Garcia to their “date” instead of him. She just knew him. So why had he now resorted to ignoring her?

Deep in her own thoughts, Y/N barely registered that Morgan was speaking to her as they walked into their bullpen. “Y/N? Hello?” the agent waved his hand in front of her face, a bemused look on his own as they walked alongside each other. “W-what?” she sputtered, blinking profusely to bring herself back into reality. 

“I asked what your plans are now that we are officially getting to cash out some vacation days?” 

Y/N thought about his question for a moment as she unloaded her bag onto her already cluttered desk. “I honestly have no idea. I thought about visiting one of my friends from home, but she also just had her baby, and I can’t really think of anything I would like less than being around a screaming child.” It wasn’t necessarily that she did not like children, to her, that just was not something a functioning adult should be able to do – but they did make her anxious, and that was not a frame of mind she wanted to spend her days off being in. 

“Well, why don’t you join me in sunny Jamaica?” Morgan winked from his desk, his not-so-subtle flirting prompting Y/N to roll her eyes. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” 

As Morgan chuckled at her remark, Spencer brushed past them. He started gathering files into his bag as soon as he got to his desk, his brows furrowed. “What about you pretty boy? I could probably swing a room for you, maybe some sun would do you good.” Apparently, Morgan was just out of luck with getting someone to join his trip, since Spencer barely gave him a response. “I am going home to visit my mom.”

Y/N smiled as she gathered her coat over her arm. “I didn’t know you were visiting your mom; you must be so excited.” Spencer rarely spoke of his mom, but she did know that he wrote to her regularly. He looked up at her but didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Yeah, I think I’ll stay there a while. I haven’t spent enough time with her as of late.” 

“So… Just to be clear, no one is taking me up on my offer to go to Jamaica? There is something seriously wrong with you all.” Morgan piped in, at exactly the wrong time. This was the most Y/N had gotten out of Spencer for nearly two weeks. However, before she could reply, Elle had gotten involved in the conversation. 

“Hey, I’d might take you up on that. When would we be leaving?”

Right as the two agents started making vacation plans, Y/N saw Spencer heading for the elevator out of the corner of her eyes. She immediately took off after him and was just able to squeeze into the elevator before the doors could shut. Spencer smiled faintly at her, whilst nervously grabbing at his tie. 

They rode in silence for a moment before Y/N sighed and exclaimed: “Okay, Reid, seriously! What is the matter with you?” 

Spencer stared at her in disbelief, his hands that were fumbling with his tie now nervously at his sides. “What do you mean?”

“Stop. You know what I mean. What is with the cold shoulder? Did I piss you off somehow?” she had waited long enough for him to come around and she refused to go on vacation before she could get things sorted between them. 

The elevator came to a halt as they arrived on the ground floor, but despite Spencer storming off into the parking lot Y/N was right behind him. “Spencer, please. You are worrying me!” 

He stopped so suddenly Y/N almost bumped into him, barely registering that they were next to her car. As he turned around, Y/N could see that his face was beet red. “I really am sorry; I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately. I know I shouldn’t shut you out, but it’s really got nothing to do with you.” He was rambling. That wasn’t necessarily uncommon for Spencer, but this was obviously different from his other tangents. 

She ran her hand through her hair, it didn’t take a profiler to know that he was not really the sharing type. That didn’t mean that she couldn’t get him to be, though. “Look, why don’t I give you a ride home. You’ve been so stealthy lately that we haven’t gotten to do our usual carpools.” Y/N did typically give Spencer a ride to and from work, since they lived pretty close to one another. 

Spencer only nodded as he walked over to the passenger side of her car, probably knowing that this was the least he could offer her. Y/N had always been the one to drive them both, which was pretty representative of their relationship overall. She was the driving force, making sure that Spencer did not get too stuck in his ways. The rest of the team typically did this in the way of stopping him when he went on his tangents, or by not letting him falter with his physical training for work, but Y/N was the one to really push him. That could span from trying new foods to not letting his failed romantic endeavors get him down.

As they drove, rain droplets were caught on the windshield of her car. Soon enough, rain was pouring down. Knowing that Y/N hated driving whilst it was either raining or snowing, Spencer cleared his throat and turned on her radio, but kept the volume down. “You know, only 21 percent of car accidents are caused by weather related circumstances. 70 percent of those accidents are due to wet pavement, which isn’t a factor here since it just started raining, and 30 percent are due to rain-“

“Spencer.” 

“Sorry.” 

“You know I usually encourage any type of calming statistics, but it just won’t cut it here. Besides, we’re almost at yours.” At that, Y/N took a sharp turn onto Spencer’s block and took her usual spot right outside of his building. As the car stopped, Spencer turned his head to face her. 

“You could come up for a while, just until the rain stops.” Y/N frowned at that; Spencer would rarely invite her up to his apartment. She had only been in there once, when she had basically forced her way in to borrow his restroom. “Are you sure?” she asked, trying to ensure that he didn’t feel like he had to baby her. She was a grown woman after all, and close to home. 

“Of course, I could make us some tea. I think I might have a box of those cookies you like, but they might be getting a bit stale…” Spencer kept talking even as he got out of the car and moved up to his apartment building, forcing Y/N to hurry up to get out of her car and lock it before she could go after him. 

********

As they got into his apartment, Y/N smiled as she took in the green walls and musty furniture. Somehow, Spencer couldn’t have found a place that was more ‘him’ than this place. “Now, I heard a promise of tea and cookies – I hope you won’t disappoint.” she mused as she took off her coat and sauntered off to his couch. Spencer watched her as she sat down with a huff and smiled lightly. “Do you want mint or lemon?” 

“Lemon, please. With milk and sugar, if you have it.” Y/N claimed to love tea, but Garcia often claimed that it wasn’t really tea anymore if it had enough dairy and sugar to give a lactose intolerant child the power of flight. 

She would have offered to help Spencer, but his comfortable couch made any effort of moving practically impossible. It wasn’t until now that she realized how tired she was. Just as her eyes fluttered shut, she felt the couch being weighed down next to her and a sweet smell. Whether that was the tea or Spencer was difficult to deduce. “I didn’t know how much sugar you wanted so I added two cubes.” 

As she opened her eyes, she was met with the sight of two large cups on the coffee table in front of her, as well as a small box of her favorite cookies. “God, Spence, you are a life saver.” Looking to her left she noticed a red-faced Spencer, which caused her to smirk. 

“Now, are you going to tell me what’s been going on?” she asked as she took her cup in her hands and settled back into the couch. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but it’s difficult for me to believe that it has nothing to do with me when I’m the only one you ignored.” Y/N watched as Spencer took a careful sip of his tea, obviously calculating his next move as he turned towards her.

“I really am sorry; I know I shouldn’t have ignored you. You can just be… difficult to talk to sometimes.” He mumbled as his long fingers clenched around his cup, his words causing her to frown.

“What do you mean?”

Spencer sighed, his eyes darting around basically looking everywhere but at her. “You can be abrasive, and sometimes it seems like you hear me, but you don’t really listen.” 

“Okay, I guess I can be a bit confrontative at times, but abrasive? I didn’t know I annoyed you that much.” Y/N was genuinely hurt by his words, though she didn’t necessarily want to prove him right by flying off the handle immediately. It had been an issue in the past, that she had a difficult time taking ‘no’ for an answer, which rarely made for the best combination with their line of work. “And I listen to you plenty.” She quipped, before taking another sip of her tea. Before Spencer could answer her, she made a point of looking out his window to check if it was still raining. Unfortunately for her, it was still pouring down. 

Spencer noticed her change in mood, it didn’t take a profiler to see how, or why, his words could have been tough for her to hear. “I’m sorry, abrasive was a p-poor choice of words, you don’t annoy me. But it feels like I have been trying to scream something off the top of my lungs and you never seem to notice.” As a sudden act of braveness, his brown eyes met Y/N’s Y/E/C ones. 

“Spence…” her brows furrowed, and she set her cup down on the table. Whatever he was about to say, her profiler skills apparently not sharp enough to catch his intentions. The team has promised not to profile each other, and Y/N took that to heart. Of course, there were things that were impossible not to pick up, but Spencer had apparently not screamed loud enough. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” these were words that made sense at the time, but once he had said his peace, Y/N wished more than anything that he hadn’t.

“I’m in love with you.” His voice was small and hesitant. The mere shock of what he was saying caused her mouth to gape slightly. What felt like a thousand different feelings ran through her mind at once, but the most prominent one was the stone that settled in her stomach. It took her some time to get back to reality and she realized that Spencer was waiting for an answer. 

“You don’t mean that.” She whispered and winced as she realized how insensitive that came off as. Spencer’s face fell, even more if that was even possible, and he scooted away from her slightly. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, no – Spence, it’s just… You were just into JJ, and now you want me to believe that you have feelings for me?” Y/N knew she was digging herself into a hole, because it was apparent that nothing that was coming out of her mouth made Spencer feel even slightly better. 

“I think I told myself that I liked her because I knew liking you was far more complicated. We’re good friends, but I just can’t keep up this charade anymore. It’s exhausting, Y/N.” in any other situation, she would have been proud of him for being so up front with his feelings, but now she found herself – admittedly selfishly – wanting him to crawl back into his shell. “I love you.” He added, as if she couldn’t feel worse than she currently did. 

Y/N felt tears prick at her eyes, threatening to fall down unless she took control of the situation again. She reached over and put a comforting hand on Spencer’s arm. “I love you too, Spencer, but…” Spencer brushed off her hand and stood up, tears in his own eyes. 

“But you don’t feel the same way. Right.” 

“Spencer, it’s easy to confuse loving someone as a friend and having romantic feelings for them. I don’t think you’ve thought this through.” She stood up herself, wanting nothing more than to hug him. However, based on Spencer’s stance, it was becoming increasingly apparent that was not happening.

“Y/N, it’s okay if you don’t feel the same way, but please don’t tell me how I feel. I just needed to tell you once, and now that I have, I think it’s best if we take some time apart.” He was solemn now, and she took that as a sign to gather her purse that she had tossed onto his couch. “Some time apart? We work on the same team.” Even if little else she had said during this conversation was reasonable, she knew that this was. 

“Work is fine, but other than that, I just need some time.” Even if Y/N knew her friend was vulnerable right now, she felt herself becoming angry. 

“Okay, well, why don’t I just leave then.” As she bolted for the door, she didn’t hear Spencer follow her. Maybe that was for the best. As she put on her jacket and gathered the rest of her things, she finally heard Spencer shuffle closer to the hallway. When she looked up, he had taken off his glasses. Somehow, it felt like the person in front of her was a stranger. 

“Please don’t be mad at me, I am really trying my best to keep it together here.” The way he pleaded with her was the last straw as tears began to fall from her eyes. 

“I’m not mad, Spence. I’ll just, I’ll see you at work then.” 

Without saying another word, she opened his front door and gently shut it behind her as she left. It wasn’t until she was safely inside of her car again that sobs started to wreck her body.


End file.
